The recently opened Lavina Mall in Kiev is the largest in Ukraine, at 140,000sqm. It’s also home to one of Europe’s largest indoor theme parks: the 20,000sqm Galaxy Amusement Park.
With system dependability a prime driver, uniform and fail-safe sound coverage for the entire amusement park is under the control of Powersoft Ottocanali power amplifiers; these were specified and installed by integrator MAG Audio – Powersoft’s Ukraine distributor.
A consistent audio soundtrack is integral to the amusement ride experience. At Galaxy this is distributed via a network of over 400 loudspeakers, installed at the 20m ceiling height and zoned around the indoor park and its attractions. Driving the audio across the vast space are just four Powersoft Ottocanali 4K4 power amplifiers.
Igor Sydorenko, MAG Store’s field service engineer and Lavina Mall project manager, responsible for project’s design and implementation, said: “In the end, the key factor for winning the deal came down to performance and price. The power capacity and complement of eight channels in the Ottocanali series saw the entire, huge installation fitted with just four Ottocanali amplifiers. Other amplifier brands just couldn’t compete and integrators had significantly higher prices as they were forced to specify many more amplifier units.
“The tender specifications explicitly stated on-board DSPs and centralised remote control via PC over the entire sound system, so Ottocanali and Armonía were perfectly suited to meet the demands of the project.”
The Kiev Mall is set to attract more than 100,000 customers per day so is aptly named: Lavina means avalanche in Russian. Galaxy’s 20 attractions are all specifically designed for indoor use – including Europe’s longest rollercoaster, which twirls in at a jolting 395m.
With ceiling heights of 20m in addition to its vast overall area, the amusement park’s dimensions presented a considerable challenge. Equally, the noise generated by the moving attractions within the space was such that considerable SPL was required to cut through to deliver important messages – and alarms, should the need arise.
Sydorenko maintains that delivering uniform performance in terms of sound quality and SPL over the entire area would have been “…impossible without the remote control Armonía offers.” He added: “Also, with eight channels and great power in each channel, the installation was simplified using just four Ottocanali 4k4 providing all the necessary zone controls and SPL capacity.”
The Ottocanali series provides a wide range of functions for tuning, controlling and diagnosing the entire audio system. DSP features include flexible routing and mixing via an internal input/output matrix, equalizers, delays and raised-cosine filters.
The DSP is also compatible with Powersoft’s Armonía Pro Audio Suite. This allows for remote control of the amplifiers via a Wi-Fi connection and so delivers essential freedom of movement for operators; without this, the management of a system on this scale, with speakers and audio cables installed at great heights across a vast area, would be impossible.
Armonía enables audio engineers and technicians to access any part of the full system, controlling system parameters with a laptop, tablet or smartphone. Furthermore, access to features can be controlled according to levels of competency. When the more complex feature sets, including filters, limiters and parameters are delivered these can be secured for access by skilled personnel only. Untrained personnel or technicians can perform essential actions such as volume, zone and full system control, without fear of compromising more critical areas of control through accidental access.
